MONTREAL — GaNaDaRa is named for the first letters of the Korean alphabet. And over the course of a meal here, you may pick up a few words of the language as well. The pedagogical leanings make sense, given that this is another address that owes its existence to the large student population in search of affordable Asian food around the downtown campus of Concordia University. Owner Hong Sook Kim, whom you’ll see in the kitchen behind the cash, opened her approachable little room last September, with the start of the academic year.

This New Chinatown address falls cheerfully into the no-frills category. Most of the young customers hunkering down over red-tinged dishes seemed to be appreciating the taste factor and the budget factor in equal amounts. The only thing I saw anyone drinking was water. Repeated blasts of cold air, which swept the room from the opening and closing of the front door, went largely ignored. Perhaps because any chills were counteracted by the heartwarming sayings stencilled to the walls. Above the strip of mirror at the bar was an appliqué of cute cartoony felines with the title “Lovely Baby Cat” and the words: “I will always be by your side. You are the one makes me smile. You love me, so I can breath.” Even the spelling mistakes may be deliberately endearing. Across the room, between stencilled birds, flowers, hearts and balloons, was the saying, “If you can dream it, you can do it.” Only the concrete-hearted would not be a tiny bit touched.

Although the menu aims to be instructive — you’ll learn, for example, that Korean kimbap with its steamed rice and seaweed wrapper is akin to Japan’s maki sushi — the spiral-bound format is unwieldy; like flipping a Jacob’s Ladder, we kept losing a sense of which side of the page we were supposed to be on. (Which is how I came to miss the padak, or Korean fried chicken, and which is in turn why I will return here soon to order some.) Fortunately, with most prices under $10, not being able to determine where appetizers ended and specialties began wasn’t a big a deal.

To begin, we plunged straight into the deep-fried end. Tuikim family got us a bowl of fresh, tempura-style items: vegetable disks, whole shrimp and mantou, pork-stuffed dumplings with a blistered shell. Dak balls were slices of boneless chicken in a puffy coating of batter, liberally squeezed with a hot and tangy house sauce that used as its base that unstoppably good gochujang. A king among condiments, the fermented hot pepper paste gives many Korean dishes a particular red hue and a darker, complex undertow of flavour.

Korean pancakes are always a draw. Instead of panjeon with seafood, we went for a simpler combo of kimchi and cabbage. The crisped surface gave way to big, glistening lengths of chopped cabbage, gently heated by the sour tang of kimchi. GaNaDaRa’s fermented cabbage was not particularly chillied up, but managed to needle the tongue enough to make the soy sauce and sesame dip superfluous. We got more kimchi, along with a pickled salad, as our banchan — these on-the-house side dishes can be intriguing. Here they were pretty basic: given and received with a bit of a shrug.

Several menu offerings were Japanese preparations that were long ago repatriated into Korean cuisine. Like the ramyun, which sounds like ramen for a reason. We ate it straight out of the aluminum saucepan. This was real student subsistence stuff, eaten in avoidance of creating dirty dishes while standing at the stove shovelling in something from the dollar store “food section” before heading out for the night.

There were versions with tonkatsu (pork) and chamchi (tuna), but we pushed the comfort food scenario further by going for the cheese. Not just any cheese: Kraft-style singles that melted into the spiced broth to make it richer and smoother around curly instant noodles, fried egg and flecks of green onion. Hot, tangy and tongue-coating in an edible oil product sort of way, it whispered to the junk food part of my brain.

Rice sticks called tobboki could be compared to mochi or pasta, tossed in another version of zingy red sauce. I like the prickliness on the palate, but I could maybe eat one or two of these dense white tubes. They also make poutine with them here, mixing them with fries and cheese.

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